“O, it is, is it?” exclaimed Chase, rising and picking up his bundle. “Then I should think the proprietors would employ first-class people for their servants.”
Almost too angry to speak plainly, Chase made the best of his way to the street. This little incident reminded him of something of which he had always been aware, but which he had never expected to have brought home to him in this way, that distinctions exist on shore as well as on ship-board. The clothing he wore was against him. That hotel was for gentlemen only; and as a sailor is not supposed to be a gentleman, he could not stop there even long enough to write a letter to his father.
“Perhaps it serves me just right. I have been too much in the habit of judging people by their clothes, but I will never do it again,” thought Chase, who now saw how unjust were the conclusions that might be drawn by measuring men and boys by such a standard. “I wonder if that clerk would have any greater respect for me if he knew that my father could buy him and his hotel! By the way——”
Here Chase stopped and looked down at the ground a moment in a brown study, and then turned and slowly retraced his steps. Might it not be a good plan, after all, he asked himself, to take the clerk’s advice and go to the sailor’s boarding-house? It would be sheer folly for him to attempt the journey across the plains without any money in his pocket, and the best thing he could do would be to procure a cheap boarding-place, and stay there until he could receive assistance from home. He would write for money at once, and while it was coming he could find something to do that would bring him enough to pay his board. This was the best idea that had yet suggested itself to him, and Chase resolved to act upon it.
“Around the corner, two streets below,” he thought, recalling the clerk’s words, and glancing in at the reading-room as he passed. “I’ll make it my business to come back here in a few days—just as soon as I can get some shore-clothes—and I’ll see if that fellow will raise any objections to me then.”
Chase easily found the house of which he was in search, for its location was pointed out by a weather-beaten sign, bearing a picture that might once have represented a frigate under full sail; but he was not very well pleased with it after he found it. It was not as neat as he expected to see it. Like the sign over the sidewalk, it was dingy and weather-stained, and some of the frosted panes in the windows were broken out, their places being supplied by rough boards and thick brown wrapping-paper, which were tacked over the holes. The house looked as though it had passed through a battle, as indeed it had, several of them; and if Chase had been there the night before, he would have seen the police make a raid upon it in force. While he stood undecided whether to enter or look further for lodgings, the door opened, and a rough-looking man in his shirt-sleeves appeared on the threshold. He had seen Chase through the window.
“Why, Jack, how de do?” he exclaimed, seizing the boy’s hand and giving it a cordial grip and shake. “When did your ship arrive? Step right into the house. I was looking for you and you were looking for me, I know. All the boys know where to come to get plenty to eat and drink.”
Chase was surprised at this greeting. The man acted and talked as if he had seen him before. Without saying a word he allowed himself to be led into the house, surrendered his bundle when the landlord offered to take it from his hand, and seated himself in a chair pointed out to him.
Before the man addressed him again, Chase had a few moments’ leisure in which to take a rapid survey of his surroundings. He saw enough in that time to make him wish that he had never come in there. The room was dirty in the extreme; the walls and the ceiling, the former adorned with cheap prints representing engagements at sea, were of a dingy brown color—made so, no doubt, by tobacco-smoke; the floor was covered with sawdust and littered with cigar-stumps, and a man dressed in the garb of a sailor was nodding in one corner. One end of the room was occupied by a bar, behind which the landlord was stowing away the bundle Chase had given him. Having done this, he placed a glass on the counter and gave the boy a friendly wink, the meaning of which the latter plainly understood.
“No, sir,” said he, emphatically.